Work From Home — An Introvert’s Perspective
As soon as our world was hit by one of the most disastrous pandemics, there was a steep increase in organizations adapting remote work as the final resort to continue their operations.
It perfectly made sense as there was a dire need to maintain social distancing and break the exponential curve. In a time when people can’t go to their offices, school, or any other places — it was a golden opportunity for companies offering remote work or team collaboration suites to increase their customers.
And, yes, we did see blatant one side marketing from corporates to encourage remote work. The problem doesn’t lie in promoting remote work — the real issue is that none in the media paid heed to about one-third or half the population — yes, the infamous introverts!
Every second article or video on the internet stated how remote work is revolutionary and how much employees would benefit from it — saving commuting time, travel expenses, etc., etc.
But what about employees who are introverts? These people are the most misunderstood in society. Every second, people think introverts are shy, suffer from social anxiety, or, simply put — are ineffective communicators.
There are several other myths related to introverts. Still, the fact is that they are often misunderstood and awarded with ridiculous adjectives such as arrogant, cocky, full of himself, and what not!
The hard truth that everyone is unaware of — except introverts — is that they are selective interactive. They are quiet because, unlike extroverts, they first need to know the other person to open up a bit more.
Introverts do take more time to form bonds, just because we are not easily available to everyone. We have our own sacred space that we expect our colleagues to respect.
Now, where does it causes trouble in a remote work scenario? The answer is plain simple: introverts vs. extroverts — the team collaboration and bonding process is unpredictably hampered.
The miscommunication arises because of introverts' nature and the understanding of extroverts — especially those who are new to the organization as they don’t know the introverts in-person.
Remote work solutions can always bring all stakeholders on a single platform, but they can never replace the basic necessity for creating trust — face-to-face interactions.
Please don’t scream video conferencing inside your head! That crappy solution can only be good for formal meetings, not when you need to create a bond between people of opposite personality types.
Of course, introverts will not speak up unless there is an utmost requirement. And, don’t you even think of those boring online team engagement activities.
The bottom line is team bonding and trust are two critical ingredients of your business success, and you will have to put in more effort to establish these core values in your team.
Whatever the differences may be — introverts and extroverts should keep them aside and bear until the offices are restored to normalcy. Having face to face conversations during lunch and coffee breaks are irreplaceable by any work from home solution and can only solve the issue of team members respecting each other personality types.
Being an introvert doesn’t make you abnormal and being an extrovert doesn’t make you act cool. We must believe in the concept of the individuality and try hard to respect each other's opinions — the only way forward to a peaceful coexistence otherwise the war between introverts and extroverts may end in broken dreams and unachieved business goals.
P.S. I am an introvert. Couldn’t sleep at night and thought to write something close to my heart.
P.P.S I belong to a rare personality type — INFJ (rarest personality types which account for only 1–2% of the overall population).
If you are an extrovert, then I would like to hear the other side of the story too. What issues you are facing during this work from home period?
